Monday, August 31, 2015

Brenda Manuelito, Dine', and Carmella Rodriguez of Laguna, N.M. created nDigiDreams for sharing stories in a digital format. Storytelling becomes an act of healing, reconnecting and restoring.About nDigiDreams:

Our stories are rooted in the earth and lie within our hearts. Our stories tell about our interrelationship with all that surrounds us—our four directions, elements, seasons, generations, and Holy Beings.

Our stories describe the events, beliefs, and values that make us who we are and bring meaning and clarity to ourselves, our families, our communities, and our cultures.

Threads from all our stories bind us together as Bilá ashdláí “five-fingered people” and can help us remember our shared histories, explain our present circumstances, and imagine our futures. Together, by making and sharing our stories with each other, we can heal our communities one story at a time.

nDigiDreams performs media production and conducts community-based digital storytelling training workshops. We believe our diverse cultures, identities, histories and stories hold enormous strength and beauty and we seek to train and empower indigenous individuals and communities with new media tools to realize optimal health and wellness.Read more about nDigiDreams:http://www.ndigidreams.com/Censored News congratulations Brenda Manuelito and Carmella Rodriguez, creators of nDigi Dreams, who both recently completed their PhDs at Antioch University in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Congratulations!

Govinda of Earthcycles is live at the Unity Concert in the Black Hills. The Crow Voices mobile radio station of Center Pole is broadcasting Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 28 -- 30, 2015.
Listen to shows live and restreaming of performers beginning on Friday night. Three days of performers, including Frank Valn, Ulali and Keith Secola. Rally for the protection of the land, water and air.
Free admission.
Listen:

At the center of Paula Flores Bonilla’s tidy living room hangs a picture of daughter Maria Sagrario Gonzalez Flores. Taken in front of the border factory in Ciudad Juarez where Sagrario worked, the photo portrays a young woman with the look of someone who was headed for big things in life. Dressed in smart attire and showing a dignified beauty, Sagrario projects a serious and stately presence, almost as if she were a border ambassador.

Snapped by one of the photographers who roamed the export-oriented manufacturing plants, or maquiladoras, offering to take pictures of female workers, the photo was shot shortly before 17-year-old Sagrario was abducted and murdered back in April 1998.

Inevitably moved to tears when she talks about Sagrario, Flores described her daughter as “friendly with many people,” but possessing a quiet personality and a preference for socializing within the family or among the girls in the church choir in which she performed. Besides chorus, Sagrario liked to play guitar and teach Sunday school to kids, her mother recalled.

A member of a financially struggling but hardworking family, Sagrario began working in the maquiladora industry at age 16. To celebrate the teen’s quinceanera, or 15th birthday party, the family bought Sagrario a small cake and adorned her with an older sister’s ceremonial dress because of the lack of money.

“She was happy with it, in spite of the fact that it wasn’t bought for her,” Flores said.

In interviews with Frontera NorteSur, Flores and two of her other daughters, Guillermina and Juana, remembered Sagrario, spoke about efforts to preserve her memory and curb similar violence, and traced back their lives in a tough Mexico-U.S. border city.

In so many ways the story of the Gonzalez Flores family is the story of Juarez.

Originally inhabitants of Durango state, the hopeful newcomers arrived in Juarez searching for a better life in 1995. Once on the border, the Gonzalez Flores clan joined hundreds of thousands of other internal migrants who had gravitated to the border city in a bid to escape economic deprivation and get ahead in life.

Bursting at the seams after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the foreign-owned maquiladoras clamored for workers. Though the wages were low, work was plentiful.

Son Chuy planned to attend a university while Sagrario dreamed of studying computing, Flores said. The close-night family found a plot of land on a wind-swept strip of land on the northwestern edge of Juarez called Lomas de Poleo. Situated at the tri-state junction of Chihuahua, New Mexico and Texas, the neighborhood overlooks Sunland Park, New Mexico, and El Paso, Texas.

Together with her father Jesus and sister Juana, Sagrario found employment in a maquiladora at the Bermudez Industrial Park. Their hands joined hundreds of thousands of others in cranking out products for the voracious consumer society just across the Rio Grande that nibbles the highway winding up to Lomas de Poleo.

Despite family members’ busy schedules, Flores insisted that they all sit down together to eat every day.

Digging into her belongings, Flores pulled out Sagrario’s old employee identification card. For the CAPCON company, Sagrario was Employee #11168. On the back side of the card, a message defined CAPCON’s commercial mission: “to deliver products and services free of defects, on time, all the time.”

Sagrario and Juana, who was only a year older than her sister, were especially close. Almost two decades later, Juana recalled Sagrario as a generous sweet tooth who always had gum to share.

“If she had a piece of gun, she’d give me half of it.” Based on her recollections, Juana calculated that she and her sister earned about $50 each every week making electrical capacitors for refrigerators and air conditioning systems.

The two sisters worked the same swing shift but were separated after the company decided to move all the employees under the age of 18 like Sagrario to the day shift, according to Juana. Shortly thereafter, in April 1998, Sagrario disappeared after leaving work one day.

Flores, who was accustomed to meeting her daughter at the bus stop down the street after returning home from CAPCON, became alarmed when Sagrario was more than ten minutes late that fateful spring day.To get home to Lomas de Poleo, Sagrario had to take a bus to downtown Juarez and then transfer to the Number 10 service for the final and lengthy excursion home. Both routes passed through sketchy zones.

Almost three weeks after she vanished, Sagrario’s body was discovered in the rural Juarez Valley, an area far from the opposite side of the city where she lived. In subsequent years, many other murdered women with signs of sexual violence would be recovered from the Juarez Valley, a hotbed of organized crime and a zone of militarization opposite the border from the Texas.

Sagrario was a “simple person with very beautiful feelings,” her older sister Guillermina said. “It’s not right that so much harm should have been done to her. This shouldn’t have happened, and it shouldn’t continue happening.”

Sagrario’s violent death would not go forgotten. Flores and family banded together with Irma Perez, Bertha Marquez and other relatives of victims of feminicide, to form Voces sin Eco ( Voices without Echo).

A pioneering relatives’ activist group that was active from 1998 to 2001, the scrappy organization demanded justice, pressured for better public safety and raised hell with state authorities over the growing toll of unsolved, violent crimes against women and the impunity that accompanied them.

As part of its justice campaign, Voces sin Eco introduced the black crosses on pink backgrounds that have since become icons of the international anti-feminicide movement and continue to cover utility posts and other public surfaces in Juarez to this day. Flores credits Guillermina, who served as the spokesperson for Voces sin Eco, for the pink cross idea.

Periodically, whenever the paint on the crosses fade, Flores and other Juarez activists take to the streets brush in hand to touch up the symbols that honor their loved ones and cry out for an end to gender violence.

The story of Sagrario and Voces sin Eco was depicted in “Senorita Extraviada” (“Missing Young Woman”), Lourdes Portillo’s landmark 2001 documentary about the Juarez feminicides.

In 2015 the iconic pink and black crosses still stand in Juarez. This cross is painted on a pole for the 060 Emergency line. Coincidentally, a bus from the Number 10 line that passesby Sagrario’s house was parked nearby.Photo Credit: Bob Chessey

In the aftermath of Sagrario’s disappearance and murder a fire of activism gripped Flores, forging a grassroots community leader who also got involved in improving the quality of life in her neighborhood.The mother of seven children (six girls and a boy) served two terms as neighborhood association president, helping bring electricity in 2002 and 2003 to Lomas de Poleo, a settlement that developed along the classic lines of similar colonias in Mexico, Latin America and the U.S. Southwest, where low-income people with dreams of a patrimony settle undeveloped lands and then struggle for basic services.

A resident of the lower portion of Lomas de Poleo, Flores supported neighbors in the upper section of the desert settlement who were locked in an explosive land dispute with members of the Zaragoza family, one of the most powerful in Juarez and Mexico.

By the middle of the last decade, violence rippled through upper Lomas de Poleo, with residents’ buildings burned or bulldozed and homeowners and their guests beaten and harassed. Two people were killed. Residents pinned the violence on security guards for the Zaragozas, whom they charged were drawn from gangs and criminal elements. Flores called upper Lomas de Poleo at the time a “concentration camp.”She added, “We saw how the authorities allowed this to go on.”

Flores fondly remembered one protest when she was arrested, put in different police campers to confuse the protesters and nearly rescued by her comrades. “This was a bitter but beautiful experience,” she said. “I saw how the people responded by running after us.”

Her twinkling eyes bursting with a young and contagious energy, Flores conveys a genuine warmth that touches many people the world over. Fetching her archives, Flores retrieved a photo of herself with Salma Hayek.

For Flores, however, the justice movement is not a one-way street of outsiders coming to Juarez to express sympathy and lend a hand to victims’ mothers like herself.

She’s hit the road in Mexico and abroad to support others demanding justice in their own lands. Flores was struck by the parallels to Juarez she encountered on trips to New Mexico and Canada, where she met family members of some of the hundreds of indigenous women who have disappeared or been murdered in recent years.

“They are humble, poor girls and live on reservations,” Flores said. “They have families that can’t struggle. (Relatives) complained about the same negligence and lack of justice.”

Four hours up the old Camino Real from her own home, Flores met women with missing or murdered relatives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She compared the 2009 West Mesa case, in which the remains of 11 murdered girls and young women of color, who were also from working-class backgrounds, were recovered from a clandestine burial ground on the outskirts of the city, to similar finds in Juarez.

“It’s the same thing. I saw many similarities to the Juarez cases,” Flores said. “(Victims) were found in empty lots and (police) hauled out (earth moving) machines and erased evidence…just like here.”The Juarez activist added, “I asked (relatives) what can we do to make known the voices of the 11 murdered women. We can do something in Juarez.”

Back at home, Flores doggedly pursued Sagrario’s suspected killers, forcing the authorities to arrest and finally convict in 2007 one man, Jose Luis Hernandez, for the crime, while still pressing officials to go after additional suspects. Hernandez, she said, set up Sagrario for a gang of drug smugglers and human traffickers in return for a payment of $500.

“The day I shut up I will turn into an accomplice,” Flores said. “Sagrario is dead but as long as I speak out, she is alive.”

Dr. Patricia Ravelo Blancas, professor of sociology and gender violence researcher for the Center for Research and Higher Education in Social Anthropology (CIESAS) in Mexico City, produced a 2010 documentary about Flores entitled “La Carta.” “We’ve learned a lot from her,” Ravelo told FNS. “She’s been a first class investigator.”

Paula Flores and her family have delivered important lessons, Ravelo said. “It’s a story that has taught us a lot, and to not stop struggling for social justice,” she added.

A lot has changed and a lot hasn’t in Lomas de Poleo and Juarez 20 years after the Gonzalez Flores family found a new place to call home. In 2015 modest homes of cement, block and wood homes have running water, electricity and sewage hook-ups; commercial chains such as S-Mart and Oxxo are opening up for business.

Down the street from the Flores homestead, the neighborhood kindergarten is now called Maria Sagrario Gonzalez Flores Kindergarten.

Yet Lomas de Poleo remains an underdeveloped place, bearing more than a passing resemblance to a poor Mexican country town, with rutted thoroughfares that spawn pools after the summer rains and unpaved roads that kick up dust and impair air quality in a tri-state region. Five years ago Flores shut down a small family store after suffering a half-dozen robberies.

Once again, the maquiladoras beckon thousands of new workers. And once again, the wages are rock bottom.

Now a mother of two children, Guillermina is disturbed by ongoing acts of violence in Juarez. “It’s sad that 15 years later girls keep disappearing and getting killed in Juarez, “ she sighed. “(Authorities) don’t want to stop the problem, or nobody can stop it and it just continues.”

Nowadays, a statute-like pink cross is plopped in front of Paula Flores’ home. Since April 2015, a mural of Sagrario covers the front of the abode. Painted by Juarez muralist Maclovio and friends, the art work is among dozens of similar projects dedicated to victims of gender violence springing up across Juarez.

“This is a memory of my sister,” Guillermina said. “It’s important for us as a family and as a society.”

Splashed with contrasting scenery, the mural alludes to the Gonzalez Flores family’s migration from their pine-rich, mountainous homeland of Durango to the high and hot desert of Juarez. Indeed, Sagrario missed the cool days of Durango, her mother said.

Behind the mural, two parakeets chirp from a small cage on the house’s patio. Flores explained she has kept such birds ever since Sagrario had a pair of them. Two big and beautiful parakeets figure prominently in the mural.

Strangely, one of the pet birds died the day Sagrario disappeared. The second one, “Luis,” suddenly flew away to never came back on the very same day Sagrario’s remains were found in the Juarez Valley, according to Flores.

“(Sagrario) hasn’t gone. She is here,” the mother said. “She’s on the mural, in the Maria Sagrario kindergarten, in the community, and on the pink crosses.”

The border's great Frontera NorteSur has lost its funding. This article by Kent Paterson, one of its current swan songs, shows the wealth of knowledge of seasoned reporters, and the great loss for us all when they are left without funding. -- Censored NewsAugust 27, 2015

FNS Feature

In Search of the Great New Mexico Chile Pepper

By Kent PatersonFrontera NorteSurIt was one of those splendid cruises up Highway 26 and around the Mesilla Valley south of Las Cruces, New Mexico. A hot summer day and Mexican radio 106.7 FM from Ciudad Juarez was jumping with classic rock and ska-Panteon Rococo, Lynyrd Skynyrd and CCR’s “Green River.”

The music crackled and the acequias flowed in a lazy sweet rhythm as the car glided by tall rows of corn, clipped clumps of hay, sleek horses, dark pecan forests and sprouting bundles of cotton, in and around Anthony, Berino, La Mesa, San Miguel, San Pablo, and Mesilla.

But something was missing, something was very odd that summer day of 2015. Not a single field of chile was readily observed.

Decades ago, when this reporter began covering the Paso del Norte borderland, this patch of Dona Ana County was Chile Country. Hundreds of acres of the hot stuff stretched far and wide under the New Mexican sun, filling buckets lugged by seasonal and immigrant workers that soothed the palates of consumers in the Land of Enchantment and far beyond.

As Anchorage prepares for the visit of Obama, Alaska's Big Village Network is holding a public demonstration to demand that the United States President Obama to "Save the Arctic" from offshore Arctic drilling operations currently underway by Shell Oil.

The public demonstration is one of many planned in Anchorage to build local and international awareness of the fragile Arctic Ocean that provides for a global nursery on the planet. The Arctic is a vital and critical food security source for Arctic indigenous peoples inhabiting the entire Arctic Region. The Arctic is an international migratory pathway for many animals, birds, fish, and marine mammals.

"Salmon is the backbone our subsistence economy," says Ole Lake, Yupik advisor for Alaska's Big Village Network. "The high probability of an oil spill in the Chukchi Sea drilling operation by Shell Oil directly affects our salmon habitat. The salmon feed of the rich biological ecosystems under the sea ice in the Arctic. All Alaskan Native peoples are impacted and threatened by offshore drilling in the Arctic."

Shellno Alaska has three demands of President Obama: 1. Cessation of exploratory drilling in the Arctic; 2. Protection of Indigenous Peoples Human Rights and Alaska's communities; 3. A rapid and just transition to renewable energy; 4. Binding agreements at the 2015 U.N. Climate Change Conference that are on par with what science has shown is necessary for a livable future.

Carl Wassilie of Shellno Alaska says: "We have to represent the voices of those who can't speak, including future generations and the animals. Arctic drilling is a violation of the human rights of the indigenous peoples of the Arctic. Obama and Shell are bypassing many laws designed to protect our coast and our communities. Obama needs to start listening to the peoples of the Arctic who oppose Arctic drilling."

Three dynamic Native women speak, on the importance of language, abuse by US Border Patrol, and how uranium mining is poisoning water supplies in Lakota territory and the westBy Brenda NorrellCensored NewsEnglish with Dutch translation by Alice Holemans, NAIS GazetteTiokasin Ghosthorse, Lakota, host of First Voices Indigenous Radio, interviewed three dynamic Native American women on his show Thursday, broadcast nationally on WBAI New York.Violet Catches, Lakota, shares her life journey of teaching Lakota language. Ofelia Rivas, O'odham, describes the trauma for O'odham living in the militarized borderzone with the brutality of US Border Patrol agents who interfere with ceremonies. Charmaine White Face, Lakota, describes how the Crow Butte uranium mine is poisoning the water supply in Pine Ridge, and abandoned uranium mines have contaminated water supplies in Lakota territory and throughout the west. Violet Catches, Cheyenne River Lakota, describes her life journey of teaching Lakota language to students beginning at the Pierre Indian Learning Center, South Dakota, and continuing until today on Cheyenne River. She describes similarities in Lakota with Ho-Chunk, Winnebego and Omaha.Violet shares how she teaches Lakota language on Cheyenne River, and how some of the early childhood language has been lost. She also explains how some words can not be translated across languages.Violet teaches at the Takini School on Cheyenne River. She said 'Takini' refers to the survivors of the massacres, and the word was also used in earlier times. "Some survivors came back from Wounded Knee," she said of the survivors who returned to Cheyenne River from Wounded Knee as young boys.

Ofelia Rivas with Yaquis in Sonora, Mexico. Photo Brenda Norrell

Ofelia Rivas, O'odham lives on traditional O'odham land, on the so-called Arizona border. Tiokasin describes how Ofelia exposes the abuses by US Border Patrol agents and how O'odham ancestors graves were unearthed during construction of the border wall. Ofelia has been abused and held at gunpoint by agents.Ofelia recently spoke at the "Native Americans Bearing Witness Retreat," in the Black Hills.Ofelia said, "People are not aware that we are living in a militarized zone." Since 911, the abuse of O'odham by US agents has intensified.Ofelia describes how O'odham have the responsibility to care for the land with ceremonies and offerings. Today, however, the O'odham people live in a condition of fear. Border Patrol agents interrupt O'odham ceremonies, and interfere with all living things, including the plants and animals.When O'odham walk outside their homes in their homeland, they are asked for their papers by US Border Patrol agenst. O'odham who are simply living their lives are questioned and considered to be criminals by Border Patrol agents.Speaking of the way of life and ceremonies, Ofelia said the people have a responsibility to keep things in balance. She says it is the nature of the people to be generous.Recently, Border Patrol agents showed their disrespect and their lack of sensitivity to O'odham culture when they placed deer antlers on a Border Patrol trailer and drove it around O'odham land. Meanwhile, Border Patrol agents are also collecting items that are sacred."It doesn't matter to them," Ofelia said. "They think they can do what they want on O'odham land."In closing, Ofelia said, "We are still here, we are alive, and we are thriving."More: O'odham Solidarity Projecthttp://www.solidarity-project.org/Charmaine White Face, coordinator of Defenders of Black Hills, describes the current hearing on the Crow Butte uranium mine in Crawford, Nebraska. Charmaine White Face, spokesperson for the Sioux Nation Treaty Council established in 1894, said there are five deep wells which provide water for Lakotas living in Pine Ridge."There is contamination of uranium," and other radioactive contaminants.Leakage from the Crow Butte uranium mine is considered to be the cause."It could definitely be polluting the water that the people of Pine Ridge drink."Besides the Crow Butte uranium mine, there are abandoned open pit uranium mines contaminating Lakota water supplies. "They have never been cleaned up."There are 272 abandoned radioactive uranium mines in South Dakota, polluting the air with the radioactive dust and the water with radioactive runoff."Companies just walked away and left these big holes in the earth that are still emitting radiation," she said.This silent contamination is ignored, or unknown, by most, as uranium mining companies push for more mining."It doesn't just affect us here," she said.All the rivers in Lakota territory have uranium contamination and empty into the Missouri River, she said.Ten million people are effected by this radiation contamination in the west."They are all breathing in this radioactive dust."Tiokasin adds how the radioactive contaminated water is sprayed on the foods in the bread basket, contaminating the country's food supply.More:www.defendblackhills.orgwww.cleanupthemines.orgListen to this show: Scroll down the WBAI archives for First Voices Indigenous Radio, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2015http://wbai.org/server-archive.html#archivesTHURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 2015: “First Voices Radio” Host Tiokasin Ghosthorse talks with Violet Catches, Lakota Language Teacher, Takini School, Cheyenne River Reservation, South Dakota; Ofelia Rivas, Elder and Activist from the Tohono O'odham Nation, Founder of O'odham Voice Against the Wall; and Charmaine White Face, Coordinator of Defenders of the Black Hills, an all volunteer environmental organization, and the traditionally appointed Spokesperson for the Sioux Nation Treaty Council established in 1894.WBAI NYC 99.5 FM. Streaming live everywhere at WBAI.ORG (9-10 am EDT / 8-9 am CDT / 7-8 am MDT / 6-7 am PDT and 3-4 am Hawai’i Standard Time. After the show airs live, listen to the archived version and/or download at (1)http://www.firstvoicesindigenousradio/program_archives or (2) http://wbai.org/server-archive.html#archives Scroll down to First Voices Indigenous Radio August 27, 2015.

My name is Anna Rondon, I am of the Towering House People, Kinya annii and Nakai Dine. I am writing to express my opinion on your Federal Coal Leasing Program as well as your due diligence in protecting the United States people is grossly negligent in meeting your own mission statement.

“The DOI protects and manages the Nation’s natural resources and cultural heritage; provides scientific and other information about those resources; and honors the Nation’s trust responsibilities or special commitments to American Indians, Alaska Natives, and affiliated island communities.”

My children’s generation and the many generations to follow us have a direct duty to protect our ways of life. I come from a family of warriors who fought in World War II and Viet Nam. Today, I fight for my Dine lands and others tribes around the world. To defend what little we have left. There we 60 comments and all but 3 support the proposed changes in this fouled leasing program that robs the tax payers.

We know the federal government dictates to our Navajo Nation corporate government, Speaker Lorenzo Bates and his cronies only listen to coal companies and does not even consult with our own Dine people. He runs off to Crow Country and tells Senate Committee that the environmental laws on coal are not fair. This is violates Dine Fundamental Laws Title 1 and the Navajo Civil Rights Act. We have lost equal protection and due process, we carry the burden of health impacts, our people are being sacrificed and the silence will be broken and told around the world how Navajo Nation is a front for Peabody, NGS, SRP and APS. All energy thugs and are worst that street gangsters in collaboration with McCain and other GOP who have shady connections with mining companies.

Aug. 28 -- 30, 2015 UNITY CONCERT GOERS: Dear Relatives,There are some elements of the concert we all want you to know:1. There is ample camping space.2. It will be nice and warm this year, so you will not get cold at night if you are camping.3. Pack clothes for warm weather as the high will be 92 degrees on Sunday and Saturday.4. We will have a water station available so no need to bring bottled water. Stay hydrated for better health.5. There will be a central tipi reserved only for prayer. Someone will be praying in there 24/7 to facilitate the whole concert. You are welcome to take a shift in there if you want. Please honor this central place by honoring the way that lakota elders are running it.6. Please plan on mainly feeding yourself. There will be a couple food vendors there to supplement what you bring.7. Bring an umbrella and a lawn chair if you can.8. The opening ceremony will start around 3:30 PM on Friday. It will be a time to pray for a good few days that will help and heal all our relations.9. There will be discussions in the tipis from 9am-12:30pm on Sunday and Saturday, and music will start at 2pm.10. On Sunday we are having the closing ceremony around 6PM and we are hoping to have everyone break camp and leave the premises at that point.11. For those visiting from elsewhere, we are so, so happy you are coming. Thank you for standing in solidarity for what is right and what is beautiful. Please honor the home of the Lakota, by honoring the culture and customs of the Lakota. This means many things, but part of it is to dress conservatively and to be humble. Aside from that, it is things you already know: be kind to each other, bring your prayers, and take the time to listen and observe how people do things in the home you are visiting. The seven Lakota principles are: Wacante Oganake: Be generous Wowaunsila: Have Compassion Wowauonihan: Give Respect and Honor Wowacintanka: Have Patience and Tolerance Wowahwala: Be Humble Woohitike: Be Guided By Your Principles, Disciplined, Brave and Courageous Woksape: Cultivate Understanding and Wisdom12. This is a drug and alcohol free event with a zero-tolerance policy. Thank you for understanding. smile emoticon13. Directions to the site are as follows: from rapid city go north on I-90W for about 13 miles. Take Exit 46 onto Elk Creek Road. Go 1.6 miles and take a left at the SECOND entrance to Elk Creek Resort. From there signs will direct you to registration. (GPS doesn't always take you far enough down the road.12. MOST OF ALL WE ARE INCREDIBLY EXCITED TO SEE YOU ALL AND WE HOPE YOU HAVE A VERY GOOD TIME HERE WITH US IN HE SAPA!!!!

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About Censored News

Censored News is published by Brenda Norrell, a journalist in Indian country for 35 years. Norrell created Censored News after she was censored and terminated as a staff reporter at Indian Country Today in 2006. Norrell has been a journalist in Indian country for 35 years. She began as a reporter at Navajo Times during the 18 years that she lived on the Navajo Nation. She was a stringer for AP and USA Today and later traveled with the Zapatistas through Mexico. She has been blacklisted by all the paying media for 11 years. Now in its 11th year with more than 16 million page views, Censored News has no ads, grants or revenues. Contact brendanorrell@gmail.com

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The Rose of Love

"O FRIEND! In the garden of thy heart plant naught but the rose of love, and from the nightingale of affection and desire loosen not thy hold." --Baha'u'llah, Baha'i Faith